Newt Gingrich ties IRS scandal to Obamacare

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich on Monday said the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups could be a huge problem for President Barack Obama because the agency is central to his health care reform law.

“Obamacare relies very heavily on the IRS,” Gingrich said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “Now every American understands there are elements of the IRS that go off on their own, do what they want to. The effort now is to say it was low-level employees. Yet, those low-level employees apparently saw public reports that they weren’t doing what they were doing and nobody informed the IRS or the treasury.

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“Why would you trust the bureaucracy with your health if you can’t trust the bureaucracy with your politics? … There are bureaucrats in the IRS who are capable of ruining your life while lying about it.”

He added, “I think the president has to say he is opening it up totally and demand everybody meet with Congress, go to the hearings. He is going to fire everybody he can legally fire who has been involved in this and they have got to look at changes. How can you put Obamacare under the Internal Revenue Service?”

Gingrich noted that while a senior IRS official apparently knew of the targeting in May 2011, then-IRS commissioner Doug Shulman apparently didn’t when he testified before Congress in May 2012. The agency apologized for the targeting on Friday.